Free Gift

Just in case your family isn't able to do anything more than a thank you, you can see below...or should I say feel below that this these are the things that really let a teacher know they are appreciated.

This is a sampling of the notes I have collected this week from families in our school (excuse the quality, please). I put a lot of work into planning to make next week-Teacher Appreciation Week-special at our school, just reading these notes and hearing the difference our teacher make makes it all worth while.

Each note starts with I, (mom, dad, student) appreciate Mrs. Smith because:This one is from a mom with two boys with special needs and she addressed it to all of the teachers and aides individually.

Gift-Basket Ideas That Won't Break the Bank!

Here are just a few ideas to add to a nice teacher gift bag or basket. Remember we want to put things in here that are consumable--the teacher will USE them versus dusting them or regifting them. What other ideas do you have?

#1 Thank you note: Handwritten by child, parent or both.
This note can be a plain piece of paper that your child folds in half and draws a picture on the front of. It can also be a homemade card you made or something from the local card store. Which one is cheapest? The plain piece of paper folded in half. Which one does the teacher want? The plain piece of paper folded in half with a drawing by your child and an appreciative note from you. Practically free!

#2 Teacher's favorite candy or lotion.
Notice, I did not say your favorite candy or the newest scented lotion you love to give out on this special occasion. It is so wonderful that you'd like to do that for the teacher, but instead take one extra minute and print this out. Hand it to your child's teacher or send it in their folder/backpack (whatever your communication system is with school) with a note that says, "Please fill this out and return it back to me. I'd love to know more about you!" Or "I'm working on a little surprise for you. Please return.) You'll enjoy knowing you spent your hard-earned money on what they like and they will too.

I say this with love, because I personally know people that are allergic to nuts, chocolate, milk and whatever they use to make card candies that are sugar-free. If I smell any type of lotion or hand soap that is scented with anything remotely floral, I will be sneezing nonstop for the rest of the day and will probably get a headache. I know you would feel awful if that happened.

#4 Hand sanitizer
There is never enough of this to go around...and look at this cute guy! The kids can't help but see this cute little guy sitting next to the tissue box!
PURELL® 9600-PL1 Pal









#5 A very small or very large gift card. If you are buying a gift card just from your family, do what you can afford. No teacher wants a family to spend outside of their limits. Now if you're pulling up to school every morning in your fully-paid-for Escalade, by all means spend what you'd like. Another great option is to get together with a few other parents in the classroom and each put a few dollars together to get a nice gift card.

I was at OfficeMax this weekend buying some extra Pentel pens and there was a rack near the checkout filled with every gift card you could possibly want. The Visa gift card I turned over--thinking that would be nice and versatile--said "$3.95 fee will be added at the checkout." Crazy!

All of these gift cards below have free shipping, no fee and no expiration date. I don't have to drive anywhere to get it and no ridiculous fee. Saved gas money + saved time= Happy parent and happy teacher!

Best Buy GC $5 Gift Card
Borders Gift Card $25
Kitchen Collection and Gadgets and More Gift Card

Sweet Irony

Have I mentioned that the runner up in my long list of blog names was "Not One More Apple"? But I have a special love for a nice, crisp Granny Smith, so I went with my sunshiney name that I loved!

Living in a smaller community (population of 3,500 population), it's normal to run into people you know. However, today I was running errands with my two daughters 45 minutes away at the closest WalMart so I was expecting to see a lot less familiar faces. It was a fun surprise to run into my eldest daughter's teacher right as we were finishing up in the produce section. I was letting the girls choose a few of the varieties of apples they wanted to sample and her wonderful teacher leaned over to get her own...juicy red apple. She said they're her favorite snack!

I guess it was just a little reminder to me that it really is all about finding out what it is your own child's teacher likes and not what you think they would like. Because if you bet $1 million that this mom was definitely not going to get her child's teacher an apple for a treat, you'd be one happy person this afternoon.

Mental note, it was a Braeburn that she said was her favorite. Okay, who am I kidding, there's not such thing as a mental note after two children...I'm off to find a pen. Then I need to get some pictures taken of my finds and progress of my gifts for Teacher Appreciation Week. Twenty-five cents and thirty-seven cents, which was the price for the pack of gum I got each teacher and which was the price of the adorable, little blue metal buckets that hold two cups of goodies???

Group Gifts for Classroom Teachers

I'm turning on the broken record for one quick moment and then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled program...one of the most appreciated things you can do for your teachers is a heartfelt, specific thank you note. That being said, here are a few group gift ideas for the special teacher in your life.

A book with a special surprise inside...Kristin at Everything Pink does this wonderful classroom gift for her children's teacher each year. She sends home a note to the families in her child's class and collects quotes about their teacher and a small cash donation. What do a few quotes and a few small donations equal? A gift to bring a teacher to tears, that's for sure! You have to visit her site to see just how easy this is. She has a step-by step tutorial, plus a great gallery of photos showing each step.

Are you thinking about collecting a small donation from families to buy your teacher a gift card? Dawn at Dawn's Stamping Thoughts has a great homemade gift card holder. She takes you through each step with her very own YouTube video, making this a fast and easy way to make a gift card a little more special. Your note of appreciation inside the card will be icing on the cake!


A homemade meal for the teacher at the end of a long day teaching, grading, counseling, etc is a wonderful idea for all of the classes families to participate in. Some parents can make the main dish, a few some side dishes, a few some bread, and a few could make some baked goods for desert. Some parents won't have the time, but might be able to donate a couple of dollars towards purchasing the food. What are some of your families favorite dishes? Make enough for leftovers and make your teacher happy for two nights!

What group ideas have you given your teachers in the past? What do you plan to do this year with a group to appreciate a teacher?

Teacher Appreciation Week Starts on Monday, May4th

Teacher Appreciation Week, May 4th to 8th, is quickly approaching. The parent group at my school is getting things rockin' and rollin' this week, so we're all set for a great week for these awesome people!

Here's how my to-do list is shaping up if you've been following our parent group's plans:

Today the families at our school are all receiving a note requesting they contribute a food donation towards the teacher's luncheon taking place on May 5th. The note contains suggested foods and parents are to choose their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice of what they'd like to donate. The are also asked to circle a time period they can volunteer to cover the teacher's duties on that day.

I'll be calling and emailing them next week to confirm what I need them to bring and the time and class I'll need them to volunteer with. We have some parents that volunteer each year to cover lunch and/or recess duties for their child's teacher and we get lots of new faces in each year also. This time they give ends up giving their teacher much needed relaxation time and their child is always so, so, so proud to have their parent in their class (It's a short-lived sense of pride before we become an embarrassment to them withe every move we make :) so help out today while you can!)

I'm driving around collecting some wonderful donations of a coupon for each staff member for a free cup of coffee and more small but kind gestures from local businesses

I have received some astronomical quotes for short chair massages, so today I'm calling two smaller reflexologists to see if they might donate their time in exchange for some free publicity.

I have purchased the pens to personalize and printed out decorative paper with the staff person's name with a quote below it: Hope your day is as wonderful as you are!



I went with black Pentel RSVP pens (super easy to open and slide the paper in and also refillable!) and a fun decorative paper inside with their name--none of the fancy-dancy spray painting suggested in the tutorial--to keep things simple. My kids are helping roll these up and put them inside the pens. The love helping out


I'm making some mini-personalized magnets also, see The Cafe's great tutorial on these. So fast, easy and inexpensive...even for 60 staff they're costing me $13.50 total!

Have you thought about how you'd like to appreciate the staff in your school?

Have you decided to go with something generic or are do you have time to do a little detective work to find out the teacher's interests?

Are you going to write a thank you note to the teacher or is your child? If your child is over the age of 8, here are some great guidelines for them on writing a nice thank you.

Now is the time to jot some notes on the following:

How you'd like to show your appreciation, what you'd like to spend, who are the important people involved in your child's education, and is there a group effort that you can donate some time to?

Are you a room parent who is going to coordinate a group gift from the classroom? Group gift ideas for your child's teacher are coming up later today.

If you have some ideas, some discounts to share for teachers or teacher gifts, free things you'd like to donate to my wonderful teachers at my school, questions, or anything else, post a comment or email me at sunshine4teachers@gmail.com.

Gardening Teacher Gift Ideas

You've done your homework and you know your child's got a real green thumb of a teacher--or at least a definite green thumb wannabe. :) Here are some good no-clutter gardener gifts:

Burt's Bees Gardener's Kit



Dish Garden



Dish Garden with Pinks



European Dish Garden




A Borders Gift Certificate for them to buy one of their gardening books on their wishlist.



A Yardiac Gift Certificate for them to pick out some fun new gardening toys from one of my personal favorite gardening catalogs. I love them because they will price match anyone. They have everything starting with organic fertilizers all the way up to decorative trellises.

Don't forget--A gift certificate right there in your neighborhood for your local green house or nursery.

What ideas do you have for the gardening teacher? Are you the gardening teacher? What would you like?

Fun Way to Make a Thank You Note for the Teacher

Do you know what a Wordle is? Neither did I before today!

Wordle= A toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Visit this great tutorial on how to create a Wordle for the front of a thank you note for a teacher.

Decorate Your Teacher's Door

Aren't these just the neatest idea ever?



Cindy, from Skip to my Lou, has a tradition at her school where they decorate the teacher's classroom door. What a great surprise to come into work and see? My favorites are the "Recipe for Success" and "Give Mrs. Moody a hand." What is your favorite? Does your parent group do this at your school?

Teacher Gifts and Chocolate Covered Spaghetti

I had to share some research with you that I was doing earlier today. The chocolate covered spaghetti was just a "control" in my test...okay, it's the day after Easter so cut me some slack. :)

Google Results:
"chocolate-covered spaghetti"=513
"gifts teachers really want"=11
"gifts teachers want"=



That number was 3. T-h-r-e-e, three, 3. Seriously? Do we put so little thought into the people who are influencing our children for seven hours a day?






You could always google "gifts for teachers" and then you could get a wonderful list of items you could personalize with the teacher's name like a mini-chalkboard, a coffee mug or a silver apple (add dripping sarcasm). Let me tell you what google won't...that will be the fifth mug they've received this year. However heartfelt and well-thought-out that gift may seem, it is what you want to get them and not what they want.

What does research say teachers really want?

1) A thank you note.
I have been out of the teaching profession for over 8 years now and I still have a box that we called our Happy Boxes at my school. It has notes in it from the parents of children that were a joy to teach and children that were a daily challenge to teach. The ones that touched me most were the ones from the parents thanking me for my patiences and love for the children that challenged me. I hear story after story from teachers who have a box, a bag or a Rubbermaid container filled with these notes. They are notes they read over and over again. That is not to say that we don't treasure wonderful handmade items, it's just that over the years things break and your "Happy Box" starts to turn into a "Happy Storage Rental Container" and you have to pick and choose what is most meaningful. I've only been able to save two small ones: From Mitchell M in 1996, an angel sun catcher and from Katie L in 1997, a red bird mini-statue. Trust me that the most meaningful thing to your child's teacher will be your words.

So write a note and make it specific. Ask your child some questions to get you writing:
-What do you like most about Mrs. Smith?
-What was something that was tricky for you to learn that Mrs. Smith helped you with?
-What was the best thing Mrs. Smith taught you this year?
-What will you miss most about Mrs. Smith next year?

As a parent jot some notes:
-Was there anything Mrs. Smith did for your child that really touched you?
-Did she help your child in a subject that was really frustrating for them?
-Did she see a strength or weakness in your child that you had not seen at home?
-Did she support their giftedness in an area by giving them more challenging work?
-Did she help your child's confidence in a certain area?

Your child's teacher will appreciate it, not just this year, but for many years to come.

2) A gift card for classroom supplies.
Where do teachers buy their supplies? Two of the most popular educational stores because of quality and cost:
I'll have some coupon codes for both coming up next week, but a gift certificate is really your best choice unless you know something your child has mentioned they need or the teacher has told you something they've been wanting. The teacher in the classroom right next door to them might have some good ideas too!

3) Ask me!
Hand this form out to your child's teacher and tell her you'd like to find out a little bit more about her for a surprise.

If they've always wanted to go to new fancy restaurant in town, but cannot afford it, a simple chipping in of five or ten dollars by you and few other parents can make that happen.

And if you're the teacher, what do you wish we knew about what you REALLY want? If you're the parent, what do you give for a gift that you know your child's teacher REALLY wants? I love your comments! Keep on sharing :)